Evan Hunter - The Paper Dragon

Then how do you account for this , sir, and how do you account for that , sir, and how do you account for the fact , sir, and tell us, sir, tell us, and I'll partial-truth that infernal machine until it short circuits itself and goes completely out of business, I can beat any machine in the house.

I've already told you once, I told the world once, isn't once enough? You know about my medal, what the hell more do you need? Shall I spell it out for you syllable by painful syllable, go over it one more time for the slow ones, cater to the lip readers, spare me, please. Make what you will of it, it's over and done with, the trial is over, the case is closed. I don't even want credit for the book, give the damn book to Constantine, let him go tell his mother he wrote it, I don't care.

The elevator doors opened. They stepped out into the corridor and walked to their room. At the door, she hesitated and put her hand on his arm.

"Dris," she said, "there's still a chance."

"For what? The case is closed. Tomorrow they'll make their set speeches, and that'll be that."

"There's something to save," she whispered.

"What's there to save, Ebie?"

"Us."

"Don't make me laugh."

"You thought so once."

"I never thought so."

"When you were discharged, when you came home, you tried to understand."

"I tried to understand for eleven goddamn years. I never could, Ebie. So forget it. I have."

"You haven't forgotten it, you've only exorcised it."

"That's the same thing."

"No. You can't erase something by writing a book about it."

"I wrote a book about the Army in Korea."

"Dris, if you won't tell them the truth, I will." She looked up at him, and he saw that there were tears in her eyes: "I'll tell them about the 105th," she said.

He did not answer her. He stared at her and tried to fathom whether or not there was substance to her threat, but he did not speak.

"I know," she said. "I know it's not a hundred and five."

He kept staring at her.

"I know it's two numbers, Dris. I know it's a ten and a five, and I know why and I'll tell them why."

"And kill me twice," he said.

"No. And save you once."

He turned away from her and unlocked the door. He hesitated in the doorway, seemed about to say something, and then went into the room instead.

Ebie followed him in soundlessly.

The day was cold and clear.

A brilliant blue sky swept from horizon to horizon beyond the tall courtroom windows, cloudless, reflecting a cold light that caused tabletops and walls, benches and chairs, even pencils lying in repose to leap toward the eye in startling clarity. Each line of the American flag beside the judge's bench seemed inked with a thick pen, its alternating red and white stripes folded in bold black shadows. Driscoll's trained eye followed each wavering dark line, dipped to the point of the flag hanging low, retraced itself upward through crossing draped and overlapping patterns toward the creased blue field and crumpled white stars. He walked behind Ebie to the empty jury box, sat beside her, glanced at Willow, and then turned toward the plaintiff's table, where his eyes met Constantine's.

For a moment, the men almost nodded to each other, almost acknowledged each other's presence. Constantine seemed ready to lift his hand from the table in a short gesture of greeting, Driscoll seemed about to smile in recognition. And then one or another of them, or perhaps both by mutual, silent, and simultaneous consent, snapped the slender thread that hung invisibly in the air between them, severed all communication, and turned once more to the business at hand.

"All rise!" the clerk called, and McIntyre swept from his chambers, took his seat behind the bench, and signaled for everyone to sit. He was carrying with him the documents submitted to him earlier that morning by both plaintiff and defendants, in which they hoped to show findings of fact and conclusions of law to support their respective cases. He had gone through these briefly in his chambers, and he spread them on the bench top now and looked out over the courtroom, locating Willow and asking, "Are you ready with your argument, Mr. Willow?"

"If your Honor please," Willow said.

"You may proceed."

Willow rose from behind the defense table, a tall and impressive figure in a dignified blue suit, holding his prepared text in his left hand, putting on his glasses as he approached the bench. He glanced at the text for just a moment, and then lowered it, as though he had already committed it to memory and would not have to refer to it again during the course of his summation. He looked committed. The plaintiff has alleged that James Driscoll could barely hear him from the jury box, said, "If your Honor please, the matter before us these past several days concerns itself solely with whether or not a theft has been commited. The plaintiff has alleged that James Driscoll freely copied from the play Catchpole when he was writing his novel The Paper Dragon . But the plaintiff has testified that he has no proof, his allegations to the contrary, that Driscoll actually possessed the manuscript or even that he saw the play before writing his book. The entire case, therefore, rests on the alleged similarities between the two works. Now, I know your Honor is familiar with and has certainly studied the record of other cases where plagiarism was claimed. I know, too, that your Honor is aware of the great number of similarities brought before the courts in those other cases, a hundred similarities, two hundred, and in one case something more than four hundred supposed similarities. In most of those cases, however, despite the overwhelming weight of similarities, the courts found against a claim of plagiarism. I mention this, your Honor, because the plaintiff's case before us rests on only a very slender body of supposed similarities, all of which are insignificant.

"I do not intend to ask the Court's indulgence while I go over each and every one of these supposedly matching points, your Honor. The plaintiff has put a necessary stress upon them because, lacking any other proof, they are his sole hope of showing theft. But, your Honor, I think we have neglected the fact that most of these similarities — even if they were copied — would not form the basis for a plagiarism suit. They are not even copy right able, your Honor. An idea is not copyrightable. A theme is not copyrightable. A plot is not copyrightable. Nor is a character copyrightable. The only thing an author may hope to copyright in his manner of expression. Judge Learned Hand has made this abundantly clear in the prevailing cases in this jurisdiction. Only the manner of expression can be copyrighted, and nothing else .

"Well, your Honor, you have read both play and novel, and you have seen the motion picture — which does not concern us at the moment, but which I believe, by the way, was written and filmed using only the book and related research as sources, and without reference to the play. You have also gone over the charts submitted by the plaintiff, and you have studied the trial transcript and I'm sure you have noted that any of these so-called similarities are due to the fact that both men were dealing with the same subject matter and the same background — the United States Army in time of combat. It would be impossible, your Honor, to present this topic without having similar conflicts springing from the very situation both writers independently chose. One cannot describe a seascape without mentioning the shore or the waves or the sky beyond, and the fact that two authors write of green waves or white foam or wet sand does not indicate one author copied from the other. Such similarities are inevitable.